Welcome Back!

Today is the first day of the 2016-2017 school year. The summer seemed to go by very fast! I want to take this opportunity to welcome all the students, parents, and other family members to Eustace ISD.

This school year is a little different from what we have grown accustomed to in the past. Now, the school year is no longer calculated in days, but in minutes. Each school district in the state is required to ensure that all campuses attend school for at least 75,600 minutes. The 75,600 came from taking a school day of 7 hours, converting that to minutes (420) and multiplying by 180. You may be thinking that this is really not any different that what we have always done. In one sense, that’s correct. If districts kept their school days at exactly 7 hours, they would still have to go 180 days to get the required minutes of instruction. However, most campuses were already going to school a little over 7 hours. That means we could get the required number of minutes in a time less than 180 days.

After much discussion and debate, the campuses were able to set times that will enable us to get all of our required minutes in 175 days. In fact, we are going to have more than the required minutes. This will give us the flexibility of not having to worry about making up days for bad weather. For 2016-2017, we could miss up to five days of school without having to make up any time.

For the most part, the morning start times are similar to what we have used in previous years. The dismissal times are a little bit different. Based on the requests of the campuses, we are going to try a different dismissal routine in the afternoons. The Intermediate and Primary will still dismiss and load buses first. After that, the buses will load at the High School. This year, the Middle School will be the last campus to load. Please be patient with us as we try to fine tune the afternoon dismissal.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback on any aspect of the district. You can always reach me at cholcombe@eustaceisd.net. You can always come by and visit in person as well. For the latest updates on district activities, please follow us on Twitter at @EustaceISD. I look forward to a great school year!